Got a Light?

I have enjoyed watching folks talk about the latest season of Twin Peaks and around the home we have been talking about it quite a bit. I appreciate this post over on the Nightshirt, not least of which for reminding me that this isn’t just a David Lynch joint, that Frost’s influence is key, too. Pointing out the series’s connection to Kubrick’s The Shining also clarifies and I find it exciting to consider how this connects the series to Stephen King and his particular Americana.

The exploration of the series alongside the Kircher Tree of Life over on Hermetic Lessons interests me, but I can’t help but feel the focus on the structure elides what is truly magical about the series. Beneath any structural and structuring elements lies a network of resonant images that belie the linearity of the Kircher Tree of Life. And it is that network of images that help create connections for seemingly disparate worlds to enter into communication with each other. It is this network, too, that we run when we explore the magical fabric of our daily life. Calling episode 8 of third season the abyss isn’t exactly wrong, but it silos off too much. There is a matrix of signs that circulate, and it is their circulation that creates many of the ‘destinations.’

Anyone else notice that FBI headquarters appears to be Philadelphia, Pennsylvania? Again, it just seems like Lynch and Frost are flagging that this FBI of theirs is something other than our FBI. These are magicians and mystics, investigating the interconnections of a spiritual cosmos whose workings they are always discovering out of sequence. The sequence itself seems to come undone, giving way to ruptures and breaks that are so difficult to close. Gordon’s office is itself partially constituted between two images, the Trinity test and Kafka, images that reappear in episode 8’s nuclear gnosis (Gordon could have been born in 1956).

Those ruptures…let’s look at the woodsmen again, shall we? We have seen them appear and reappear throughout the series, blackened as if by a terrible fire. Here we see them summoned forth by Evil Cooper’s near death and in connection with that most destructive fire, the nuclear bomb, a dark version of the stars brought down to earth in their alien and celestial glory. Those woodsmen ask after one thing, light. Burnt to charcoal, they may no longer be capable of being lit up (though perhaps by a nuclear fire), but they still seek after it.

These are the magician’s klippot, dangerous and powerful precisely. There is some insight here for us to take away. Part of what makes them dangerous is that they hunger for what they were touched with, fire, and it is fire that the magician calls (‘Fire walk with me’). They are the residue that no longer produces heat, the spent fuel, the sludge, but they are drawn to the heat they once produced. Burnt out, they are impermeable to fire’s influence, so drawing close they tend to smother it. To deal with them, you need to consider slower avenues to restructure them. That slowness may explain some of what is going in the series as a whole.